In space engine we see visible light. I think an interesting feature would be to simulate other areas of the EM spectrum.

You could toggle a long, thin rectangular bar at the bottom of the window. You could then have a movable, re sizable selected area of the bar. Moving and changing the selection will change the range of wavelengths currently visible. By default it would be set to visible light, and there could be buttons to different presets- visible light, UV, infrared, etc.

Now, I know computer monitors and human eyes can only display and see visible light. No matter which area of the spectrum is selected, you will only ever be able to see the usual 32-bit color. Therefore, the lowest wavelengths will always be red, and the highest will always be purple. The normal rainbow of colors (or colours, if you're in Europe ) we see everyday would be scaled to fit the range of wavelengths selected.

For example, I could select everything from the longest infrared light to the shortest UV light. The visible light displayed would appear as mostly one kind of color (yellows or greens, maybe, depending on where VI lies within the selection) since it is now a much smaller part of the total selection.

Of course, we'd need to have a more complex set of properties for each kind of star- information on how much light a star radiates in other areas of the spectrum. Overall, the idea doesn't seem like it would be that hard to implement- SE already has a decent lighting system.

And we wouldn't just see a saturated rainbow, like on a thermal camera. We'd still see plenty of shades of colors from varying amounts of light on different wavelengths just like in the real world. The dark sides of planets and moons would still be as dark as ever.

A few versions down, this would be a really cool feature to implement- it would also be very unique.

Modelling full spectra of a star is possible, but what to do with the planets? They may be very complex. In infrared, hot and warm planets will shine brightly at both day and night-side. On terras, oceans will be brighter and bluish (hotter) at night-side than land, with some temperature distribution along meridians. Airless bodies will have heat patterns shifted to the evening side: at evening time the surface is hotter than in the morning. The galaxy in the far IR band will be "inverted": dust clouds will shine, but most stars will be invisible. In ultraviolet, atmosphere with ozone layer will be opaque, like Venus or Titan in visible light. In the microwave band all the sky will be filled with shine - this is a cosmic microwave background radiation, but stars and planets will be very faint. In radiowaves, galaxy's hydrogen clouds will shine at a 21 cm wavelength, neutron stars and gas giants will appear as strange comet-like structures - this is a synchrotron radiation of electrons accelerated in a powerful magnetic field. In X-rays and gamma ray band, only the visible objects will be accretion disks around black holes and neutron stars. And the main problem is IR/UV/... textures for Earth, Moon, Mars and all the other real planets of our Solar system.

Aside from Sol system textures, assuming we limit wavelength ranges to presets- VI, IR, UV, etc.- and provided that things like chemical compositions of planets/atmospheres are elaborated upon (in the future) for procedural worlds, do you think some of those problems can be solved?

It sound horridly complex but it would fit with space engine's goal of being as realistic as possible.

That's sort of what I was thinking. I remembered an illustration I saw a while ago in an astronomy book- a series of panoramic photos of the Milky Way, each taken in a different area of the electromagnetic spectrum. I thought, "what if Space Engine could do that?"

something I would love to see in Space engine is too be able to see the universe in "false colors" representing different waveleghts. when you look at the universe in visible light, you are only seeing a small part of the universe I'm not sure about how hard it is to do something like that, but to be able to see a star or a nebula in infrared or microwave would give way more deep to space engine.

but I think this is impossible currently because of the huge amount of work that has to be done for that. Maybe one day in the far future we are going to see this kind of things in SE.

I think this is a great idea. With a very simple settings display; one parameter to change wavelength and an other to choose the bandwith.

You would have to change all the textures in the Engine to show this. But also you would have to programe new and complex phenomena. For example Space Engine would have to render chemical composition of every object, galaxy. nebula and gas cloud so when you choose certain spectral regions it could show the different molecular composition. For example if you choose a wavelength of 656.28 nm with a very small bandwith you will see the Hydrogen Universe, like in this picture of the sky taken from our point of view http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/ff/WHAM_survey.png

And not only, you also would have to change parameters like opacity, reflectance, ect... because different wavelengths change all. For example the windows are transparent within our spectral band, but for other frequencies it would be opaque, and the air we breath could become a cloud of fogg.

Also your fleash looks opaque in visible light but when you displace the spectrum to the X-rays it becomes transparent and the shadows of your hand in this tipe of vision would be created by your bones and not by all the volume covered by your skin. In the same manner, planets, in Far radio waves would become transparent and maybe in oter wavelengths the are like mirrors and in other maybe your can only see the very dense core (bacause it is not transparent at some wavelengths). So you also need to render all the things in their interior and allk the shadows beetween obejts in a different way.

You could see phenomena like a thunder beetween Io and Jupiter (i think they are only visible in the far X-ray), ect... The stars, the planets, all would be different.

It also would be great to see more that only an electromagnetic vision of the universe. Maybe a Neutrino vision (with their spectrum) or maybe a Gravitational Waves vision (also with his spectrum).

This is a very popularly suggested idea. I believe the consensus is that although it would definitely be cool, the amount of work required would be enormous, as even a basic treatment of the astrophysics for the production and transmission of each wavelength rapidly becomes very complex.

One feature which I would really love: just like the exposure slider, maybe you could make a slider to see different wavelengths of light, something like Gamma - Roentgen - Ultraviolet - Visible - Infrared - Radio. Seeing stars and planets in these different lights would be fascinating. EDIT: Never mind. Apparently I'm too blind to see the post a few slots below me. I'm sorry.

It's no problem, NigerianKingOfScam. Merged your post here and sent a PM for you. In future, try the search tool. -Watsisname

Yes this would be super awesome but I have to say I'm much more eagerly awaiting more complex (I hope) dynamic weather and atmospheric and planetary composition data. The engine is just so mind numbingly incredible but there's just so much more to be done and seen as well, it#s incredible!

This is a suggestion, and it came to me whilst I was watching a debate simultaneously playing space engine. They were talking about how the human vision is so narrow in the detection of wavelength, and I remembered the chromoscope page that allows you to view the galaxy in different wavelengths. Would it be possible to have an option to view the planetarium in different wavelengths, like radiowaves, microwaves etc... or if we can even select our own range, like from 5nm to 50,000nm? Maybe in the far future when the company is bigger. It would really be cool to have 'hidden' objects or clouds that only reflect light in other wavelengths, or to turn the visual scope to gamma rays and see the beams off of suns that would ordinarily be invisible. For those smartasses out there (You know who you are ) don't say 'We won't be able to see it' ;D. If I select microwaves, the colours will be like in Chromoscope, for example, microwaves make everything look purple, infra-red is red etc... Or even, an algorithm in which if I select a range, for example, infra-red to ultraviolet, our visual spectrum will evenly spreadout to fill the new range. So, red will be 50nm instead of the real-world 390nm (If you know what I mean )

You think this would be a cool and/or a probable future addition to this magnificent engine?

This is perhaps one of our most popular suggestions. It's a wonderful idea and I'd love to see it myself, but in practice would be a great deal of work to accomplish. There are a lot of astrophysical phenomena that need to be considered when rendering the universe in different wavelengths. Not to say that this goal is impossible -- it's just not something you should expect to see implemented in the near future. Someday, maybe.

By the way, please take a moment to review the forum rules, and in the future use the search feature to check if a thread for your topic already exists. Thanks, and welcome to the boards!